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Transitory

Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 10:45 pm
by Dr. Goodword

• transitory •

Pronunciation: træn-zê-to-ree • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: Passing quickly, momentary, lasting only briefly, short-lived, not permanent.

Notes: Today's Good Word belongs to a huge extended family. In addition to its adverb, transitorily, a near synonym transient, and a noun, transitoriness. It is related to transit, transition, transitive, and a host of others. Remember to change the Y to I before the suffixes -ly and -ness.

In Play: We do find situations even around the house for the literal sense of today's Good Word: "Ice cream leads an extremely transitory existence in my refrigerator. Every carton I buy melts away as though it were left outside." This word is poetic, though, and sounds better in figurative usage: "Spring and fall are the most transitory seasons of the year."

Word History: Today's is obviously another word we snitched when French wasn't looking. French inherited it from Latin as it was spoken ages ago in France. It is based on the preposition trans "across, through" + ire "to go". The root of ire is it-, also visible in words like itinerary and (re)iterate. It is very close to the Russian root id-, seen in idti "to go", also found in other Slavic languages like Polish, Czech, and Serbian. (We are glad that Tim Ward's interest in sending us excellent Good Words like today's is not transitory but has continued for a long time.)

Re: TRANSITORY

Posted: Thu Dec 04, 2014 7:43 pm
by Slava
Transitory can also be used to describe the attention span of most modern Americans. That 24/7 news cycle sure doesn't help people who might wish to ponder a bit.

Re: Transitory

Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2014 3:14 pm
by Perry Lassiter
Au contraire, mon ami. The media I see obsess on the quodlibet of the day. All news channels focus on one or two stories a day. Never mind the whole world is going berserk, and they could cover twenty stories in a half hour. And that's from rotating through four channels. Any wonder I resort to news apps on the ole iPad?